The Coming
by CharlesTheBold
Summary: Christmas is approaching, and the Girardi house is full of returning family members.  Is it time for Joan to reveal her secret at last?
1. Nightmare

**THE COMING**

_(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with JOAN. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)_

_(Author's Note: This story is part of a series speculating what might have happened to Joan after the end of the series. In prior stories Joan has let Adam, Luke, Helen, and Lily into the secret, and is now married to Adam. Kevin is married to Lily.)_

_(Author's Note: In my last story, The Quest, Joan's life was endangered during a mission, and she was rescued by her father, who shot her assailant. Will is still dealing with the fallout now)_

_(This story is set during the Christmas season of 2006._)

**Chapter 1 Nightmare**

_The gunman had a hostage! Will, from hiding, drew his gun, but he reminded himself that he was here as a consultant, and was supposed to let the FBI handle the crisis._

_The young woman wriggled partially free, and Will finally got a good view of her face. Joan! What was she doing here? About to get herself murdered, basically._

_Will aimed his gun and fired, and Joan's head exploded. Then the universe exploded, and Will was engulfed in turmoil. _

Then he awoke and sat up in bed, gasping. He was gripping the sheets tightly.

Another nightmare, but it took several seconds for him to sort out illusion from reality. Joan wasn't dead. She was sleeping in her old room, along with her husband, just down the hall. It was the gunman that had died.

He willed himself to stay quiet. His wife Helen was sleeping peacefully at his side, and he didn't want to wake her. Indeed, there were several people whose sleep he had to worry about, because the house was more crowded than it had ever been. Kevin had moved back in several months ago, with his pregnant wife. Joan and Adam had come back from Baconia University for the Christmas holidays. Luke had come down from Harvard, and was the only family member sleeping alone.

Will slipped out of bed without shaking it, and found his robe by feel. He tiptoed toward the door. Downstairs, he could get something to drink that might put him back to sleep, and even if he failed to sleep, at least he would be somewhere where he didn't have to worry about waking others.

As he walked down the stairs, he suddenly noticed that the kitchen lights were on. Being a policeman, he thought: burglars! But a second later he heard Lily's voice from the kitchen, nervous.

"Who's there?"

"Will," he said hastily.

"Thank God. I thought – well never mind. Come in."

He walked the rest of the way to the kitchen, and saw Lily pouring milk. Her robe was somewhat too small to cover her stomach – she was more than six months along now - and he could see parts of her bra and panties. He tried not to look. It was an awkward situation to get in with his daughter-in-law, though Lily seemed oblivious to it.

"Had a nightmare," she said. "Hormones, I guess."

"I had one too."

"I'll pour two glasses, then. Let's sit at the table."

They sat. The cosy breakfast-room table looked a bit spooky in the darkened room at 1:00 in the morning. "Is the baby OK?" asked Will in concern.

"Oh, fine. I'm really looking forward to having her. I know she's going to be special."

Every parent's dream, though Will politely did not say so. It was what made it so much more painful when something went wrong – as when your firstborn son gets partly paralyzed in an accident, or when the daughter you tried to protect nearly gets herself killed. He confined his questioning to a minor issue. "She? You've done the ultrasound for the baby's sex?"

"No. It's just – a feeling I've got."

_Was she about to say something else? Is she hiding something from me? Nonsense, you're getting paranoid, Will. Letting your difficulties with Joan distort your perceptions of everybody else._

"What about you, Will? Is something bothering you?"

Will thought to deny it, but that would be silly. "I killed a man a week ago."

She nodded. "Yes, I heard the story. He had taken Joan hostage and was threatening to kill her, and you saved her life. As I see it, the guy brought about his own death."

"His threat might have been a bluff."

"Well , you can scarcely feel guilty about believing somebody will do what he says. What do your colleagues say? Didn't they hold a hearing?"

He knew that she knew the answer to that; she was trying to get him to talk. "Yes. Permissible use of deadly force to save a life. But there was one question I couldn't answer: Why Joan was there. Joan won't tell me."

"But why feel guilty because Joan won't tell you something? Joan's 19, and married. Old enough to be responsible for her own behavior."

"I ought to have a trusting relationship with my daughter."

Lily got up and started walking, waddling a little because of the burden in her womb. Will was regretting getting in this conversation. Lily was looking forward to her own "special" daughter; why pour cold water on her dreams by talking about problems with adolescent girls?

"Maybe it's like this," she mused. "Joan did something that she now realizes was stupid. Playing Nancy Drew. Or imitating that friend from California, what's her name?"

"Veronica Mars."

"Then she got in a deadly situation that could have claimed her life, and did end up claiming somebody else's. Now she's too embarrassed to talk about it, particularly if it will end up getting repeated at an FBI inquiry. Wouldn't you be reluctant to tell a professional FBI detective that you were playing Hardy Boys?"

Will tried to put himself in Joan's head, and realized that he was too drowsy and too oppressed by the nightmare to be that objective. "Yeah. Maybe it's just something like that." He sighed. "I've got to get back to bed. Thank you for listening, Lily. You'd make a good mother-confessor."

"There aren't any mother-confessors."

"I know. One of the things your church ought to reconsider." _Yikes, that was not a good thing to say, even if I believe it. The last thing I need is to debate the pros and cons of Catholicism at 1:30 in the morning._ "Sorry."

She waved it off. "Yeah. Well, let's get back to bed, and we'll be thinking more clearly in the morning. Good night."

"Good night."

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. The Season to be Jolly

**THE COMING**

**Chapter 2 The Season to be Jolly  
><strong>

"Mom! We're back."

Joan went into her home and noticed with relief that it was somewhat emptier. It had been positively packed last night, and after all Joan and her husband had contributed to the crowding.

"Good, Joan. How were Glynis and Friedmann?"

"Doing very well."

"Glynis has made up the school credits she missed last spring," said Adam, "and she has a diploma now. She and Friedmann will start applying to colleges for next fall. In the meantime they've both got jobs as contract programmers." 

Glynis and Friedmann, both brilliant students, had seemed to be on the fast track to success, but their path had gotten derailed the previous year when Glynis had gotten pregnant after a single indiscretion with Friemann. God had had Joan and her friends intervene a bit to save the situation.

"They were putting up some Hannukah decorations when we visited," said Joan. "And the baby is very cute."

Helen gave the young couple a significant look. "Are you two thinking of-?"

"NO." Joan looked almost embarrassed. "For the moment, I'm going to admire babies at a distance, until I get my degree. Isn't enough that Sister Lily is going to make you a grand-mama?" It was a year and a half since Lily had decided that her destiny was to be a wife rather than a celibate nun, but Joan still thought it funny to call her sister-in-law by the nickname.

"That's not what I'm after. In fact, thinking of myself as a grandmother makes me feel old."

"Well you are starting to wrinkle…" When Helen glared at her daughter, Joan put up her hands and laughed. "I'm kidding Mom. Jeez. Speaking of Sister Lily though, where is she? She was still asleep when we left this morning."

"She told me that she was up during part of the night. But now she's at the church, preparing for a Christmas pageant. And, by the way, she said she was anxious to speak to you about something, and asked if you could come by the church."

"My afternoon's free," said Joan.

"I agreed to help my Dad with his new apartment," opposed Adam, "but I can drop you off at the church, Jane."

Joan was secretly anxious to get out of the house again. Every moment she spent there, she was haunted by a question: _What am I going to do about Dad? _

When Adam dropped his wife at the Catholic church, she saw lots of people in the courtyard. They were surrounding a big, painted wooden construct. Joan, the daughter and wife of artists, thought it looked crude, but at least it conveyed the idea of a Judean village 2000 years ago. One painted building was marked "INN" and a curtained-off opening marked "STABLE", in anachronistic English, but somebody had painted Hebrew or Aramaic words under the English.

"Hi, Joan. Any messages from heaven lately?" asked a man next to her, holding a megaphone.

"W-What?" she asked. Was this an avatar? She didn't recognize him.

"Sorry, I couldn't resist the joke, miss. You look just like that picture of St. Joan of Arc, hanging in the hallway."

"Oh. Yeah, I posed for that, a year and a half ago."

The man turned toward the painted backdrop and put the megaphone to his mouth. "OK, let's rehearse the no-room-in-the-inn-scene."

To Joan's surprise, a man in robes circled around the end of the backdrop, leading a real, live donkey. Perched sidesaddle on the donkey's back, also dressed in old robes, was Sister Lily. The robes did not hide her condition, nor were they intended to_. Yeah, get a real pregnant woman to play a pregnant Mary, makes sense._

The sight worried Joan a bit, so much so that she didn't listen much to the dialogue between  
>"Joseph" and the "innkeeper", which was predictable anyway. A few months ago, she had tried to ride a horse only to have it run away with her, and nearly throw her off. Joan had no intention of ever trying to ride a donkey. But it would be dangerous to the baby if Sister Lily fell off at this stage. Joan had to assume that they had found a reasonably docile donkey or at least someone who could control it.<p>

With that concern allayed, Joan worried about a more philosophical matter. Luke had remarked, on several occasions, that he found it difficult to identify the abstract God described by Einstein with the avatars he ran into on the street. Joan found that she was having trouble associating the avatars with a story from 2000 years ago. It seemed like too much of, well, a STORY. And seeing a modern woman dress in robes and ride a donkey didn't make it seem any more realistic.

Meanwhile Joseph had gotten permission to use the stable, and so he led the donkey and Lily through the curtains. A few seconds later, the entire backdrop rotated around and revealed another painting on back, representing the interior of the stable. Now THAT was clever.

The donkey and Joseph were still there, but there was another woman playing Mary, and holding a baby. Lily herself appeared around the edge of the backdrop and waved at Joan.

Joan followed her sister-in-law inside the church. They passed her mother's painting of St. Joan, and reached Lily's office as one of the church's counselors. Lily closed the door.

"I feel weird, walking around in this getup," complained Lily, sounding very un-Virgin-Maryish. "Mind if I change while we talk? We're family, after all."

"If it doesn't bother you."

Lily tugged off the robe, revealing a disconcertingly large, undraped belly underneath. It suddenly occurred to Joan that she hadn't dealt with expectant mothers much – she had only been a baby when her mother was carrying Luke, and Helen's childbearing had stopped then. She had given Glynis moral support, but hadn't had much private talk with her. The odd thing was, Adam probably had more experience with pregnancy than she had, because he and his father had given Bonnie shelter, after a boyfriend had knocked her up and her family had kicked her out.

"I had a conversation with Will last night," said Lily, as she picked up her maternity jeans. "He's very upset."

"I know – he feels guilty shooting the guy, even with a life at stake."

"He's upset with YOU, Joan. Because you won't tell him why you were there, and that means he can't get closure."

"You know why I was there. God had sent Adam and me on a mission."

Lily donned the jeans. "Yes, but I couldn't say that. I told him you must have done something stupid and was too embarrassed to talk about it."

"Gee, thanks a lot!"

"It's the best I could think of at one o'clock in the morning! If you don't like it, YOU tell him something." Now looking like a twenty-first century woman, Lily sat down in her chair.

"I can't," Joan said miserably. "I can't lie to him anymore, and I can't tell the truth."

"Well, you can't stay silent any more, either. You owe an explanation to your father."

"Have you told Kevin? He IS your husband, after all, and the father of your kid—" Joan knew she sounded like a child, but she couldn't help it. In college, to say "yeah but you did this" was just too immature.

Lily looked flustered. "We've told him that it's possible that the Girardis are descended from an old-Testament prophetess, Deborah. After all, it's his roots, he has a right to know. As for going on missions for God, it wasn't my secret to tell."

"I'll give you permission to tell Kevin the secret."

"Oh, so now you're putting ME on the spot?" Lilly did not look pleased.

Joan sighed. "I'm sorry, Lily. I don't know what to do about this, so I was lashing out at you."

"Well, you're right about one thing. We can't tell Will and not tell Kevin. And Kevin will probably be easier to convince. He doesn't have Will's resistance to the notion of God; he just ignores the question. OK. I promise to tell Kevin, on condition that YOU promise to tell Will before Christmas. And I'll help figure out how to approach Will, and we can get suggestions from Helen and Luke as well."

"Yeah, sounds like the best thing to do," Joan said reluctantly. She was glad she wouldn't have to do it alone though.

But it looked like she was not going to have a very merry Christmas-

TO BE CONTINUED

_Note: Joan's misadventure with the horse occurred in an earlier story called ANOTHER JOAN. The idea that the Girardis are descendants of an ancient Biblical prophetess is from another story, THE MISSING LINK._

_Note: The suggestion about Joan riding a donkey is an in-joke. Amber Tamblyn's character rode a donkey while playing tourist in SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELLING PANTS II, and wound up falling off._


	3. Pillow Talk

**THE COMING**

**Chapter 3 Pillow Talk**

Getting into bed was awkward for the younger Girardi couple these days. For the first year of marriage Lily helped lift her semi-paralyzed husband into bed, something she had gotten used to doing. But now she was several months along and nobody wanted her lifting heavy objects, so Will or Helen lent a hand.

Tonight things were awkward even afterward. Lily lay beside her husband trying to think of what to say. The big problem, she could see now, was not just making the revelation, but explaining why nobody had done so for three and a half years. To be sure Lily had only been told a month ago, and Helen at the beginning of fall, but Joan and Luke were going to be put on the spot.

"Kevin? There's something I have to tell you."

He chuckled. "Oh? It isn't that you're having a baby, because I already know that." He turned somber suddenly. "Wait. Something hasn't gone wrong, has it?"

"No, no. It's not the baby. It's something you should know." Lily took a deep breath. "Joan-goes-on-missions-for-God."

"What? Has she joined some religious group at school?"

"It doesn't have to do with a group. Joan has one-on-One meetings with God, and He tells her what He wants her to do."

"Meetings – Joan told you that?"

"Yeah."

"Are you aware that Joan had hallucinations a few years ago? It worries me, if they've come back."

Lilly knew that Kevin wasn't going to accept it right away, but she did wish it was easier. "They weren't hallucinations, Kevin."

"Or – have you considered that she's been taken in by a charlatan, who can do magic tricks and claim that they are miracles?"

"He doesn't do magic tricks. And God takes different forms. Lots of times He appears as a woman."

"So you believe her?"

"Yes."

They fell silent. Lily wished it wasn't dark in the room, because she wished she could see what Kevin was thinking by his expression. Normally, after more than a year of marriage, she would have been able to guess.

"Lily, I don't know a polite way to put this. But has it occurred to you that you'd have a natural tendency to believe this stuff, as a church employee and former nun?"

"I'm not that gullible, Kevin! Yeah, I know there are idiots out there who'd believe that 2 plus 2 was 5 if you told them the Bible said so. But I can use my brains! And if you don't believe I can sort sense from nonsense, I'd think you'd believe Luke—"

"Luke? What does he have to do with it?"

_Damn! I didn't intend to bring Luke in; I haven't asked him for permission to tell his part of the secret. _

"Same thing as me. He's heard the story, and believes it_." That's deliberately misleading, Luke is far more deeply involved than that, but I can't say that. I hope I don't get caught out over that. This is going badly._

"Why tell one brother and not the other? No, wait. Why don't you begin at the beginning?"

"The beginning? Well, we think Joan – and you – have an ancestress who was in the Bible. The prophetess Deborah."

"Yeah, I remember. Mom had a DNA test and they said it could be traced to the ancient Middle East. Did that go to Joan's head?"

"No, the association with Go started a lot earlier – when Joan was very little she had an invisible friend named Yah-yah. Everybody thought it was a game, but Yah-yah was actually baby-talk for Yahveh, God's personal name. Nobody told Joan that; God must have told Joan His name."

"I remember the 'game'. This is getting creepy."

Lily repeated the story as Joan had told it to her. She had met, or rather re-met, God shortly after arriving in Arcadia, and started going on the missions. After falling ill with Lyme Disease she thought the encounters might have been hallucinations, but eventually figured out that they were for real, and took up the missions again. Some missions were minor, some had life-changing implications for certain people. She found out that her mother had suffered a traumatizing attack in college. She kept Adam from dropping out of school after his first big art sale. She got an unstable boy arrested before he went on a rampage with a gun at the school. She forgave Adam after he slept with another girl, and later again after he panicked and stood her up at their marriage ceremony. She discovered that a crazed rich guy was responsible for vandalizing Lily's church. She talked Friedmann into marrying Glynis after he knocked her up.

"This is amazing," Kevin said. "All that weird behavior, and it turned out right so often. But not always. That little boy she babysat, he died, and so did Judith. Joan nearly got killed twice this fall. And - me."

_Uh, oh. I knew this was going to come up._

"My legs are ruined, probably for life," said Kevin bitterly. "People kept saying it was an Act of God, but what they really meant was that it was a senseless accident. S*** happens. Now you're telling me that there really is a God, and He let it happen? Why? To punish me for getting drunk at a party?"

"No." Lily struggled with getting the words out. It was spiraling out of control very fast.

"Why did he let Judith die? To punish her for getting involved with drugs? Or being gay? Or maybe He thought Judith was a bad influence on Joan and decided to get rid of her?"

"No – we don't understand why -"

"But all that's OK with Joan, and she's willing to do Him favors. And apparently it's all right with you, too."

"Kevin! Please –"

"I never thought too much about God. When I was growing up, Mom was a lot more set against religion than she is now, and Dad always was, so we never talked about God. And when we married, you and I agreed to disagree. But now it seems that there's a God who could work a miracle and heal me, and He won't. I'm not asking for a freebie – I'd do anything, to walk again. But nobody else cares!"

Kevin twisted around so that his back was to his wife. It took a lot more effort than it would for a healthy person, and it demonstrated how angry he was. Lily turned away as well, on the verge of tears.

_Joan was right, revealing the secret to Kevin was awful, and it'll be even worse with Will. But it has to be done._

TO BE CONTINUED


	4. The Brothers Girardi

**THE COMING**

**Chapter 4 The Brothers Girardi**

When Luke stepped out of his bedroom the next morning, it was obvious that something was wrong in the atmosphere of the house, as if something was projecting a physical field of unpleasantness. He couldn't localize it until he happened to see his brother and sister-in-law cross paths in the hallway, travelling to the bathroom. He saw Kevin glare at Sister Lily, who wilted but seemed to know exactly why she was being glared at. Neither said a word to Luke.

Although the parents had hoped that they could have traditional breakfasts now that everybody was temporarily back home, it hadn't turned out that way. Joan and Adam liked to sleep late, now that they didn't have to adhere to a college schedule (Luke suspected they were using part of the night to do something besides sleep). Sister Lily dashed out this morning, saying she'd grab a bite on the way to work – not how she usually behaved since getting pregnant. Mom and Dad seemed to be having a big discussion in bed, about the recent shooting incident. So Luke and Kevin found themselves alone at the breakfast table at one point. Luke fetched several items from the kitchen for Kevin, hoping that would cheer him up, but Kevin seemed pre-occupied all during breakfast. Afterwards he spoke up.

"Luke, I'm glad it's the two of us here. There's something that we need to talk about." He guided his wheelchair into the living room.

"Oh?" Maybe Luke was going to find out what was going on. He hoped that he would not get pulled into a marital spat in which he would have to choose between family members.

"Lily told me something very odd last night," said Kevin. "About Joan."

"I guess there are a lot of odd things about Joan," said Luke, trying to make a joke. But Kevin continued grimly.

"According to her, Joan meets a lot of strangers, and thinks that they're God in disguise. She does whatever they tell her to do."

_Ulp_. This was a bolt from the blue for Luke; he hadn't been involved in earlier conversations, though Joan had mentioned a vague wish to tell their father their secret.

"Lily said Joan had told you about the strangers. Luke, I know you're the type not to swallow a wild story without evidence, though you might have been polite to Joan about it. Do you believe Joan, or do you think she's gone crazy again?"

_I wish Lily had warned me. I don't know how to handle this. I suppose sticking to the truth is best._ "I believe her, Kevin. I've met the strangers. So has Grace. One of the strangers was a cowgirl, and she gave Grace riding lessons."

"God as a cowgirl." Kevin seemed to have trouble absorbing that, as indeed anybody might, coming upon Joan's way of life without prior warning. "In jeans, riding a horse?"

"Yeah." Luke wished that he had picked a better example, like Old Lady God, who at least conveyed an impression of dignity and wisdom.

"Um, okay. So when meeting this cowgirl, did you happen to ask about miracles?"

"No. I'm much more interested in how He, or She, devised scientific laws for the universe, instead of how they get broken."

"Even though you had a brother who'll never walk again without a miracle?"

Luke realized that he had been stupid. Of course that was why Kevin was interested in God and miracles. Yet he had been honest in saying that his interest in a consistent system of scientific laws had left him temperamentally opposed to considering miracles.

"Three people dealing directly with God," said Kevin bitterly, while Luke was still considering a response. "Maybe four, including Grace Polonski. And none of you asked if God could help me. Nobody cares!"

Before Luke could think of a reply to this, Kevin spun his wheelchair around and headed to the front door, opening it and zooming out without closing it behind him.

CRASH!

"Kevin!" cried Luke, dashing out behind his brother.

Kevin's wheelchair had run off the side of the ramp that had been built over the front stairs for him. His chair was lying on the ground, on its side, and Kevin himself was sprawled on the grass, struggling to rise. He had had no trouble with the ramp for three years, but obviously he had been too upset today to aim his chair properly.

The crash and Luke's shout had gotten the attention of the rest of the family. Mom and Dad appeared at the front door in seconds, still in bathrobes. Joan and Adam appeared a minute afterward. Luke tried to help Kevin up.

"No! Don't touch me! I don't trust you!" Kevin looked around. "Dad, help me up."

"Helen, call 911," ordered Dad, but Mom already had her cell phone out. Luke tried to make himself helpful by picking up the wheelchair and straightening it out. Dad looked worried as he lifted up his firstborn. He of course had no idea why Kevin would express mistrust of Luke; perhaps he was worried that Kevin had banged his head and wasn't thinking clearly, but could Luke explain otherwise?

A couple of long hours later-

"Mr. Girardi is basically all right," said the doctor. "A few cuts and bruises. But we'd like to keep him under observation overnight, to make sure that the action isn't causing any more stress to the damaged spinal cord."

That was a relief to Luke. The past hour had been the worst of his life, and not just because of Kevin's accident, or his expression of distrust toward Luke. The entire family had gone to the emergency clinic, and Sister Lily had come from church. Luke desperately wanted to explain what had happened, but with Dad there, he couldn't tell the truth, and he was not good at telling lies. What was worst, Dad seemed to realize that Luke was withholding information.

After the doctor went off, Dad got out his cell phone. "Good news. Kevin's injuries are mild – thank you for the sympathy – what? Well – I – all right, I'm coming." He broke the connection and turned to the family. "There are a couple of people from Washington at police headquarters, wanting to discuss the shooting. They were understanding about my son being hurt, but now they'd like me to come in. I'm afraid—"

"I'm sure Kevin will understand why you couldn't stay, Dad," said Joan.

"Thank you, Joan. I'll call back when I'm free, Helen."

Dad walked out, and the atmosphere in the waiting room changed immediately. Now only family members in the secret were present. Luke felt relieved – then felt ashamed of himself for feeling that way.

"All right, Luke, tell us what happened," his Mom asked grimly.

Luke described the argument between himself and Kevin, culminating in the wide rush out the door and the crash.

"It's all my fault," said Lily miserably. "I should have warned everybody how Kevin was feeling. And I should have realized, at the beginning, what a theological gulf there is between Kevin and me. To me, God is omniscient; there is a reason for everything that He does. But Kevin's never been too religious; to him God is just a very powerful Guy, and he can't understand why we don't make deals with Him."

"People have made deals with God before," said Helen angrily. "The Bible talks about God making a covenant with the Jews, a two-way exchange. Why shouldn't we feel free to ask for some return, particularly when it's out of love, and not just selfish? And if He won't heal Kevin, He could at least give us some guidance about a crisis that's threatening to tear our family apart. Well, I'm not going to stay adrift any longer. If I can't get divine guidance one way, I'll get it in another."

"What do you mean, Mom?" asked Luke.

"Tomorrow, after making sure Kevin is OK, I'm going to confession at the church. And I'm going to tell Father Mallory everything!"

TO BE CONTINUED


	5. Will Will or Won't Will?

**THE COMING**

**Chapter 5 Will Will or Won't Will?**

"Will, the majority seems willing to clear you, deciding the shooting was justified," said Weiser, chairman of the oversight committee, taking Will aside after meeting. "But Noner is threatening to write a minority report, claiming that you could have arranged for your daughter to be there, to justify the shooting."

"That's ridiculous," Will exclaimed. "If anything had gone wrong with that proposed plan, Joan would be dead!"

"I understand that. All we need is some reasonable alternative explanation for her presence, to put in the report, and I may be able to veto Noner. But we don't have subpoena power. You or your daughter will have to volunteer the information."

"Joan won't tell me."

Weiser sighed. "Will, you're a detective. You don't have to wait for people to decide to tell you things. You can investigate!"

"I hate to use detective work on my own daughter."

He looked sympathetic. "It's the best way out. Look, Will, if the explanation is embarrassing to her, I can order the report sealed. All anybody outside the committee needs to know is that you were cleared. But give me something to work on!"

"I'll – look into it," Will said vaguely, mainly to stop Weiser from urging him. After all, Will had other things to worry about, like a son in the hospital.

When Will reached the hospital room, Helen was sitting by Kevin's bed, looking very stressed out. "Oh, hello Will. The kids have been here most of the day, but we advised them to go out for the evening; it's the holiday season after all. Luke is helping the Rabbi and Mrs. Polonski at a Hannukah party; he wants to get more familiar with Grace's religion. Joan and Adam are visiting the Friedmanns and their baby."

"Good. I think you should get some relief as well. I'll sit with you, Kevin. Helen, why don't you and Lily go out to dinner, exchange some girl talk?"

"Maybe that would be a good idea," replied his wife. But she said it in a somber tone, as if she was thinking of something deeper than girl talk.

Will saw her out, then returned to his son's bedside. "So Kev, how's it going?" he asked, trying to sound hearty.

"I'm bored stiff," said Kevin. "I don't really need to be here, but the doctors are keeping me overnight for observation."

"Well, at least your family has been keeping you company."

Kevin snorted. "Hypocrites."

"W-what?" Will said, shocked. He remembered Kevin's wild shout this morning about not trusting Luke, but he had attributed that to momentary confusion and disorientation. But hours later?

"I don't mean Mom. But Lily, Luke, Joan, they're all faking it. Maybe Adam too."

"What makes you say that?"

"Luke and the others know a way to get me cured. But he won't use it."

Will tried to interpret that. Luke was at MIT, and was interested in biology. Maybe he had heard of some potential cure for paralysis, and mentioned it, and Kevin got over-excited about it. Then he misinterpreted attempts to calm him down as denials of the cure.

Will decided to reason with him. "Kevin, it's not like Luke to just deny you access to a cure. Maybe he thinks there are terrible side-effects, or it's something that won't be perfected for years."

"It's not like that, Dad."

"All right, tell me what it is like," said Will, getting frustrated.

Kevin thought a while. "I can't tell you, Dad. You'll think I'm crazy, and paranoid. That the cure is just my imagination and the others aren't going along with me."

"But—" Will was at a loss. The best that he could think of was to talk to the others and find out what had happened. Poor Lily, pregnant, shouldn't have to deal with a husband who seemed unreasonably hostile to her. He remembered seeing a recent movie, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, where a husband had gone schizophrenic while his wife was expecting their first baby.

Carefully, Will changed the subject, not talking about the paralysis or about his own troubles at the hearing. He asked Kevin about well-received articles that he had recently written at his newspaper job, and they discussed that for a couple of hours.

When Will got home, the house was still empty; everybody was still out for the evening. Will fixed himself a small supper and brooded. Two big mysteries, one about a cure, one about the shooting incident. Were they connected somehow. It occurred to Will that they both involved Joan. Was that a coincidence?

After supper, Will walked up the stairs. Joan's door was open. He went inside her room, in the vague hope that he could absorb the answer by osmosis. But it wasn't that easy.

_You don't have to wait for people to decide to tell you things. You can investigate!_

But Joan was his daughter! And ever since she had recovered from Lyme Disease, he had tried to respect her privacy.

But his career might be at stake, all because Joan wanted to keep a secret.

He noticed Joan's laptop. It was showing a screensaver. With a trembling finger, Will typed a key, and the saver vanished and showed the Windows desktop.

Everybody in the family used a login/password on their systems; Luke had set it up on their computers and urged them that it was important to use it. But Joan had forgotten to log out. Maybe she was online this morning when Kevin had crashed downstairs, and had dashed off without worrying about security. And she hadn't come back.

A few months ago Joan and several other members of the family had encrypted their Emails, but eventually stopped for some reason. If Will clicked on her mailbox—

The cursor hovered over the icon.

No, he couldn't. It would be violating Joan's expectation of privacy. There were rules.

Will logged out of her computer, an irreversible act because he didn't have the password to get back in. Then he went to his room, sat on the bed, and put his face in his hands.

Will was suffering from the worse of both worlds. He had not done enough to get any benefit out of it, but he had done enough to feel guilty.

TO BE CONTINUED


	6. Those who have Wandered in Darkness

**THE COMING**

**Chapter 6 Those who have Wandered in Darkness**

"So exactly where are we going?" asked Adam, at the wheel of the car.

"Nowhere," said Joan. "Just away from the family for a while."

"We can't go nowhere forever, Jane."

"Just a couple of hours will help," said Joan. "Mom will tell Dad we're at the Friedmann's. He doesn't know that we were there last night."

Adam turned on the radio. Not surprisingly, it was playing Christmas music.

_Yet in the dark streets shineth _

_An everlasting light_

_The hopes and fears of all the years_

_Are met with thee tonight._

_Hopes and fears_, that summed it up exactly. Was being chosen by God a hope or a fear? At the moment, not much of a hope. She knew a confrontation with her father was coming up and she was dreading it.

_Go tell it on the mountain!_

_Over the hills and everywhere!_

_Go tell it on the mountain!_

_That-_

"It's not that simple!" Joan yelled at the radio. "Could you turn it off, Adam?"

Adam turned the sound off, but he sounded sulky. "It may be artistic temperament, but driving in the cold and dark in silence gets on my nerves, Jane."

"Let's compromise," she said. "Give 'Go tell it on the mountain' a chance to finish, then we'll turn it back on."

When he turned it back on, it was playing 'Joy to the World'. Joan was not feeling particularly joyful.

They turned onto Sidney Street. This was the street where Rabbi Polonski's synagogue was located. Joan had been there a number of times, particularly when Ryan Hunter had sabotaged it and she had helped in the rebuilding. Sounds of exotic music – at least to Joan's ears – could be heard inside; she remembered that they were having a Hannukah party tonight.

"Somebody's trying to wave us down, Adam," pointed out Joan as they approached the building.

"I see him. Do you think it's safe to pick up a hitchhiker?"

"Right in front of a house of worship, I think so."

Adam pulled to a stop in front of the hitchhiker. It was Luke.

"Luke! Did something go wrong?" She supposed that being the only Gentile at the party might have been a little awkward.

Luke got in the back seat. "Oh, the party's fine. I'm wrong," he said ruefully.

"What—?"

"I couldn't get in the festive mood, because I keep thinking of Kevin telling me not to get near him. The rabbi thought I was worried about my brother being in the hospital, so he gave me permission to leave early."

"Kevin didn't mean it, Luke."

"Yes, he did. Why HAVEN'T we been demanding that God help Kevin in return for going on missions?"

Joan thought back and remembered getting a lecture on miracles from God – in the form of a little girl wearing toy antennae. Yeah, Kevin would really be impressed by THAT image. "She said that it was important for humans to believe in a consistent universe ruled by unchanging laws. You should appreciate that, Luke, as a scientist type."

"As a scientist type, yes. As a brother, no."

The three young people reached their house. Mom and Sister Lily had already gotten home and were sitting in the living room; the young people went upstairs after perfunctory hellos. Luke went into his room and closed the door – barricading himself in, Joan thought. She and her husband went to her own room and tried to shut themselves in as well, but after only five minutes there was a knock at the door.

"Who is it?" asked Joan.

"Lily. We gotta talk."

Joan sighed and let her sister-in-law in. She invited the pregnant woman to sit on her bed, while she and Adam stood around awkwardly.

Sister Lily went directly to the point. "I had a big argument with your Mom."

"What about?"

"Can't you guess? Helen's threatening to go to confession with Father Ken tomorrow. If she tells the whole story, then the Father will realize I've been concealing things from him."

"Isn't he sworn not to repeat what he hears in the confessional?" asked Adam.

"Of course, that's not the problem. FATHER KEN WILL KNOW. Even though he's forbidden to talk about it, his trust in me will be damaged. Do you know how much that means to me? Between my leaving the monastery and my meeting your family, Father Ken was the one person who understood me. A nun who breaks her monastic vows is like Rodney Dangerfield; she don't get much respect."

"Did you explain that to Mom?"

"Yeah. She said she'd be careful that her confession doesn't refer to me. But I think the Father will be wise enough to read between the lines."

"Maybe if Joan points out the same thing – that Helen can't confess without outing Joan – and saying that she doesn't want to be outed—" stammered Adam. "Er—"

"This can't go on!" protested Joan. "I need some peace and quiet."

She marched out of the room, leaving her husband and sister-in-law. As she passed her parent's room, her father, who was sitting on his own bed looking gloomy, called out.

"Joan, dear? Could you come in for a moment?"

With misgivings, Joan went inside.

"Joan, my meetings with the oversight committee are approaching a crisis. I simply MUST know how you and Adam ended up with those gangsters."

"You won't believe me, Dad."

"Try me."

"All right, all right." All the discussions of the evening seemed to have been leading to this moment. "GOD sent me there. For the past two and a half years, I'VE BEEN GOING ON MISSIONS FOR GOD!"

TO BE CONTINUED.


	7. Mysterious Ways

**THE COMING**

**Chapter 7 Mysterious Ways**

"Joan, this isn't a joking matter."

"I'm not joking. I'm telling the truth."

Luke, Helen, and Lily appeared in the doorway looking concerned. Presumably Joan's yell had been audible all over the house and had gotten their attention. But to Will's surprise they were looking, not at Joan, but at Will himself.

"You don't even go to church, Joan."

"I don't have to. God meets me in the street, in stores, in school, and so on, whenever he has a mission for me."

"MEETS you? You see an old man with a beard and robes walking around the streets?"

"No. He has disguises – a cute boy, a little girl, an old woman."

Will had a horrible thought. A lunatic Joan, going around town, convinced that the ordinary people she sees are a mysterious deity in disguise. And at one point it was explicit, when Joan clearly saw hallucinations under the influence of Lyme Disease, babbling about Price being the devil before passing out altogether. Supposedly the summer at Gentle Acres had cured her. But what if, instead, Judith had taught Joan how to appear normal? Judith had been the daughter of a pair of psychiatrists; she might even have known how to fool professionals.

All this must have been visible in Will's face, because before he could even say anything, Joan turned to her younger brother. "Tell him, Luke."

"I've seen the people Joan's talking about," said Luke. "We call them avatars. But He mainly talks to Joan."

"I've seen Them once or twice," said Helen, "but mainly in dreams."

His whole family! Luke, with his excellent brain and determinedly logical approach to life. Helen, whose girlhood faith had been shattered by the traumatizing assault during her freshman year of college. Is it possible they were humoring Joan, trying to save her from being treated as a potential madwoman? But would they do so by openly stating before Will that her delusions were the truth? Or did they all believe Joan?

Will was normally a hard-headed man. Faced with an interviewee with a wild story, he would methodically analyze it, determine if the story was a lie or a delusion. But this was his family; he couldn't be that aggressive toward them. And he felt outnumbered, a rare sensation for Will, who usually felt quite self-sufficient even when alone. At the moment Joan, Luke, Helen, and Lily were standing in his doorway, blocking his exit from the room, especially Lily with her big belly. Without even intending to, they were cornering him.

"I need to think about this. Let me out."

Joan and Luke stood aside, allowing Will to leave. But where could he go? It was a busy house, full of people who had been hiding a huge secret from him. He needed to be alone, but where? His police station was open 24/7, of course, but he had no excuse for barging in on his night sergeant. Go to a motel, and rumors would instantly fly that the chief of police had family problems. He had no friends close enough to drag into this. Then he remembered an out. "I'm going to visit Kevin."

At the time he said it, it simply seemed a good pretext to leave the house – but then he realized how the whole Kevin incident fit in. Lily must have told Kevin in bed that the family had a connection to God, and Kevin had freaked out.

And if Lily had told Kevin that there WAS a connection, then clearly the family wasn't just humoring Joan. Lily believed Joan's story, which implied that Luke and Helen probably believed it as well. Yet nobody had told Will what was going on.

Because nobody wanted to talk about God in front of Will.

Why had the whole family kept a secret from Will? Because, without being conscious of it, he had intimidated them into not discussing religious matters. Everybody knew Will had soured on religion in his youth, and nobody wanted to confront it. Of course he knew that Lily was a former nun and still worked for a church; that Luke was fascinated by Einsteinian statements such as "God does not play dice with the universe" or "God is subtle but not malicious". But he hadn't known that the entire family was keeping a secret from him, about God.

Will hadn't even communed with himself on the subject. Deep down, what did he not believe? Sometimes he thought that God did not exist, that He had been invented by cynical priests for manipulating people. If there was evil in the world, it was simply because crap happened. But sometimes he felt as if evil could be traced back to a divine source. In an Italian adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello, Iago had said _"Credo in un Dio crudel", _I believe in a cruel God, who spread evil through the universe. Now he would have to formulate what he unbelieved, simply to decide how to deal with his family.

By the time he reached the hospital, visiting hours were officially over, but the nurses were willing to make an exception for the chief of police wishing to visit his son. Will intended to be careful not to wake Kevin if he was asleep, since half his purpose was to treat the hospital room as a refuge. But Kevin was still awake. "Hi, Dad."

"Hi, son." Will hesitated, not sure if he should bring this up, and decided to let Kevin choose. "I talked to Joan this evening. She told me – what's been happening."

Kevin scowled. "Then you know she has an inside track with God, and isn't using it to help me walk again."

Will, preoccupied with his family's dynamics, hadn't even thought of that angle yet. "So you believe them?"

"It doesn't really matter. They believe themselves – Lily, Helen, Joan, Luke. They think they have access to a cure, and they're not using it. They don't care about me. Not even Lily. In her thirties, probably hearing her clock ticking and anxious to have a baby. Now that she's got one coming, she doesn't need me."

Will was appalled by Kevin's despair. By comparison, his main grudge against the family was merely that they had kept secrets from him. "No, Kevin, I'm sure it's not like that. Lily loves you."

"Then why won't she ask God to heal me?" Will could see that Kevin was fighting back tears.

Will tried to think back on religious comments Lily had made. That was difficult, because, once again, Lily had kept the peace by seldom discussing religion in front of Will. He thought further back, to the worldview that he had had before the family crisis had caused him to lose his faith. Convincing Kevin of Lily's loyalty was the important thing now. "I think it's because, in her view, God is not a person that you can ask things of. At best you pray for something and see if God answers the prayer. If He doesn't, people like Lily assume that He has good reason. Remember when the synagogue put on FIDDLER ON THE ROOF last summer? Tevye says

'_Would it spoil some great eternal plan, if I were a wealthy man?_' He takes it for granted that God has a great eternal plan that is more important than Tevye's wishes." Suddenly, and with great relief, Will thought of an even better argument. "Or take Luke. He believes God is behind the laws of the universe. Would he ever say 'Please, God, decrease the force of gravity so that it would be easier to lift so-and-so?' "

"Is that what you believe?" said Kevin, intrigued, his mind momentarily distracted from its tailspin.

"No. I've found it far easier to believe that there either is no God, or that He doesn't care. Trusting too much in God's purposes can leave somebody fatalistic – 'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world'. But at least I can understand where Lily and Luke are coming from."

Will's argument seemed to soothe Kevin a bit; he no longer ranted that his wife cared nothing about his welfare. Maybe hearing Will express faith in Lily was more important than the actual arguments. Now Kevin seemed simply puzzled by the whole thing. Which was understandable, because Will hadn't solved the fundamental problem either.

Will stayed with Kevin for most of the rest of the night, dozing off in a chair of Kevin's room. In the end, before dawn, he left, returning home long enough to shave and pick up fresh clothes for the morrow. He was quiet, and woke up nobody. It was better to have his family asleep instead of awake and arguing with him. Then he went to his office, and tried to throw himself into work, hoping that it would take his mind off of family problems and metaphysics.

About 10:30 in the morning he received a phone call from Weiser.

"Will, everything's all right. Your daughter has explained everything."

"Everything?" asked Will in bewilderment.

"Right. She said she was too embarrassed up to now to admit to play Nancy Drew, but realized now how important it was to come clean. She convinced Noner that it had nothing to do with you, so he's willing to close the case."

"I see," said Will, trying not to let the surprise show in his voice. "Thank you."

Something was weird about that. The case had solved itself over the night. It was almost as if it had been untangled by a _deus ex machina_.

And with a sudden shock, Will remembered what_ deus ex machina_ literally meant – God coming out of a machine.

TO BE CONTINUED

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Italian quote is from Guiseppe Verdi's operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's OTHELLO; the words are by Italian poet Arrigo Boito. Will remembers it because he is part Italian in heritage._

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: I made a few revisions in the chapter on 9/3, in response to SANDEFUR's critique._


	8. And the Truth Shall Make you Free

**THE COMING**

**Chapter 8 And the Truth Shall Make You Free**

The hospital gave Kevin something to help him sleep. When he woke up the next morning, he remembered having a wonderful dream. He had been with Lily, but not the Lily with whom he had argued with the previous night. It was the Lily from the best parts of his life: kneeling and asking Kevin to marry her; the honeymoon at Niagara Falls, moving into their own apartment, learning that they were going to have a baby. It was all jumbled together – sometimes they were at the park in Canada, sometimes at Arcadia, and Lily seemed to be talking about the baby even though they had just gone through their wedding night. What was clear was that Kevin's subconscious was trying to tell him something, that he and Lily were meant to be together.

Or was it his subconscious? Kevin has never been into supernatural explanations, but now he wondered: was Lily's God trying to tell him something instead?

As his checkout time approached, his father appeared to help him gather his things. He told Kevin that the investigation had cleared him of the charges surrounding the shooting of Joan's assailant. On the strength of that, and Kevin's leaving the hospital, he had gotten permission to take a few hours off of work in the middle of the day.

"You must be very relieved," Kevin observed, "but you don't look it."

"No, there's another ordeal ahead," said his father. "I've already called Helen, asked her to get the family together. It's time that we had a big discussion."

An hour later, everybody was gathered in the living room: Helen, Kevin, Joan, Luke, Adam, and Lily. Will looked around at them. "All right. We're all adults here – even Luke passed his 18th birthday earlier this month. I don't have the right to order anybody what to do with their religious beliefs. But we're a family, and that means more than just a collection of seven people all going their separate ways. I don't want our lying to each other. So I'd like for us to talk over this situation honestly. Does anybody object?"

"I've been wanting to talk openly for ages," stated Joan.

"Let me say something," said Kevin. It might have been better to speak with his wife privately, but he knew that the whole family had already been dragged into the argument, and needed to hear the apology. "Lily, when we married we agreed to disagree about religion. I never anticipated this situation coming up. I'm sorry I've been behaving like such a boor. I know you love me, but I need to understand why you won't demand that God cure me, even if I disagree with it."

"I know," said Lily. "I didn't know how to bring it up to you -"

"Maybe we should let Joan start," Luke interrupted. "She's the one things happened to first."

"I started getting visits from God when we first moved to Arcadia," said Joan. "He took the form of a teenaged boy. A, um, very cute boy."

"In other words," said Will, "He came to you at a point where you were desperate for new friends, and in a form most designed to appeal to a teenaged girl. Didn't you find that suspicious?"

"I WAS suspicious," Joan confirmed. "I worried that He might be just a kid playing an elaborate practical joke, or a supernatural Thing trying to tempt me into doing wrong. After I came down with Lyme Disease I thought the visits were just hallucinations. But what convinced me was that things He told me to do had good ripples. They proved that I was working with Something that understood the universe, knew how things were going to work."

"Why didn't you tell us what was going on?"

"The first person I told was Dr. Dan, and he DID think I was crazy. And you let him send me to Crazy Camp, just on his say-so! Do you think I was going to tell you about meeting God on the street, after that, unless God backed me up?"

Joan looked angry, and their father looked chastened. "Did you tell anybody else?"

"Judith, at Crazy Camp. But at the time she and I both thought God was a hallucination brought on by my illness. I think, just before she died, she got a vision of the truth." 

"How did the others get involved, if you were careful to keep it a secret?"

"I think I better answer that," put in Luke. "God let Grace overhear her Him talking to Joan one evening, and she told me. That was, let's see, the beginning of summer, 2005. Joan was terrified of being sent back to Crazy Camp, so Grace and Iswore not to tell anybody else, and decided to investigate on our own."

Will looked glum. It was looking clear to Kevin that the decision to send Joan to Gentle Acres had had disastrous consequences – bad ripples, to use Joan's clever metaphor. It had frightened not only Joan, but also Luke and his girlfriend, into keeping secrets from their Dad, and maybe from Kevin.

"Grace and I were skeptical at first, but by the end of summer we had found enough evidence to accept Joan's story, and then God started appearing to us occasionally," added Luke.

"That fall," Adam said, "it was obvious to me that Grace and the Girardis were hiding a secret from me, and I nagged Joan to trust me. She finally told me a year ago, at Christmas."

Thinking back, Kevin remembered how the three of them had made all sorts of wild decisions a year ago that amazingly worked out. Unmasking Ryan Hunter as a crazed vandal, persuading Friedmann to stick by his pregnant girlfriend, Grace Polonski befriending a Muslim who might have been expected to reject a Jewish girl. Joan defending a man who had been unjustly arrested, and later solving a series of mysteries on flimsy evidence.

His father turned to his wife, looking overwhelmed. "What about you, Helen?"

"My story's a bit different. I've been having odd dreams for years. In one of them, a few months ago, I was told what Joan was doing, and Joan confirmed the story when I visited her in college. It seems that my family has always produced a series of mystics, usually in the female line, going all the way back to an Old Testament prophetess named Deborah. I was supposed to be a Handmaiden of God, or whatever you want to call it. But there was that – that incident in college, which soured me on religion for years. So it skipped me and God recruited my daughter instead."

Everybody understood what she meant by "that incident". The brutal sexual assault that had left Helen traumatized for years, so that even now she was highly reluctant to discuss her feelings about it.

"Apparently my baby's in the line, too," said Lily, her hand on her swelling belly. "I had a prophetic dream last month, just because I was carrying my daughter. So Helen and Joan let me into the secret."

"Wait a minute," said Kevin. "If it involves both my mother and my unborn daughter, it would have passed through me. But I've never felt particularly holy."

"Like I said, it passes though the female line," said Helen. "Or maybe, like me, you were, um —"

"Preoccupied by my own tragedy, yeah," Kevin admitted. "I AM feeling a little obtuse, not to have noticed more things going on in this house, with my sister and younger brother."

"Don't blame yourself," said Joan. "I was TRYING to hide what was going on in my life!"

"Let's stick to facts, and not trying to throw blame around," said Will firmly. "Joan, what happened yesterday with the police investigation?"

Joan sighed. "I visited Mr. Noner yesterday, and spun the story a bit. I said that Adam and I were trying to reconcile a couple of computer nerds, which was true." Luke looked a little annoyed at the nerd reference, but didn't interrupt. "I said that when the situation seemed mysterious, I couldn't resist playing detective, because I had a friend named Veronica Mars who liked sleuthing around. Mr. Noner thought I was a bit of ditz not to have been more cautious, and I let him think so, because that got Dad off the hook."

"Thank you, Joan. But how did you know that Mr. Noner was the key person? I never told the family that."

"How do you think I found out? God told me. Though He's usually a lot more vague than that."

"Vague?"

"Usually when He gives me a mission, She doesn't tell me why it's important, or exactly what I'm supposed to do."

Will ignored the odd shift in gender. "Dominance games."

"No, it's to encourage me to examine the situation, think things out on my own. Not just the facts, but the moral implications. I've gotten a lot better at it, over three years. I think I'm being trained for something, something crucial in my future."

"Buttering you up by telling you how important you are. 'You ought to be in pictures'; that was a pick-up line in my parents' generation."

"It's not like that, but it's not something I can explain. It's a feeling."

"Which He, or She, might be implanting in you."

Kevin suddenly felt cold. The idea of God sending him a dream encouraging him to forgive Lily no longer seemed so benign. But all Joan did was to repeat: "It's not like that."

There was a long pause, and Will finally said. "OK. As I said, we're all adults, and I don't think I can order people how to order their religious lives. But I think everybody should be more on their guard about what they're asked to do. If some mission affects the family, the family should know about it. And in the meantime, I'm going to use all the investigative skills at my command, and try to figure out exactly what this deity or whatever is up to."

KNOCKNOCKNOCK.

Everybody started. Though nobody said so out loud, it was very ominous timing that the knocking at the front door came exactly after Will's hostile remark.

"I'll get it," said Kevin, who was nearest the front door. He didn't want his father to confront Whatever was outside, in case it was angry.

Kevin opened the door, revealing a rather tall, creepy-looking man in black. He looked like a archetypical undertaker. "I think it's time we talked," the man said.

Kevin looked back into the living room to see everybody's reaction. There wasn't any. Everybody, even Joan, seemed to have gone into a trance. Kevin turned back to the visitor. "Are you HIM?"

"You're upset because I have not healed you,"said the Man in Black, ignoring the question. "How badly do you want to be healed?"

"Very much so."

"The bottleneck is fixing the damaged nerve, which is beyond current science. But in a few years, scientists will learn how to splice in donated nerve tissue, though only if it's a very close match. The only suitable donor is your future daughter. Would you ask for a transplant from her?"

"No! I'd rather stay paralyzed!" shouted Kevin in shock.

"That's what I hoped to hear," said the Man in Black. He stretched out His arm – indeed it seemed as if He was literally increasing its length – and tapped the back of Kevin's neck. Kevin felt a tingling down his back, travelling down into an area that had felt nothing for years.

"Hey!" Kevin tried to rise up, but toppled back into the wheelchair.

"I said the damaged nerve was the bottleneck, not the entire problem," said the Man in Black. "Your muscles have not been used for years. Considerable therapy will be necessary, and much effort on your part. But that's within the reach of today's medicine."

"And I'll walk! Right? I'll walk! Thank You! But why couldn't You have done this earlier?"

"You needed to be prepared. For a long time you have been pre-occupied by your own tragedy, oblivious to what was going on in the life of your sister and brother. You needed to learn the truth, and make a selfless choice of your own, before you could be free. Besides, I work in mysterious ways," said the undertaker, walking off.

One week later, Kevin was sitting in the audience watching the Christmas pageant at the church. He was still in his wheelchair, but he would not be there forever. He watched proudly as Lily, costumed as the Virgin Mary with the divine baby in her womb, rode in on her donkey. He envied the parishioner playing the role of Joseph, haggling with the innkeeper. Maybe he would play it, some year.

Afterwards, during the manger scene, Lily was replaced by another woman who wasn't so visibly pregnant. The ex-nun circled around the makeshift stage unobtrusively and slipped into the seat next to her husband. On stage, an angel was reciting a liturgy: "Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord."

Kevin still didn't understand the conventionally religious life. But at the moment he felt somehow in tune with the universe. The Hope of the Ages on stage, was matching the hope in his heart. He wondered if Joan felt this attunement all the time. It was like a new age beginning, both in the drama and in his own life.

THE END.


End file.
